Tiny, quick Mercury is the smallest planet, now that Pluto has been demoted, and is the planet closest to the sun. In Roman mythology, Mercury was the messenger of the gods, in the tradition of Hermes, and was also the god of trickery and commerce. Since Mercury is too close to the sun to be fully mapped, we have only a partial view of it's surface. However, in 2011, the spacecraft MESSENGER will orbit the tiny planet and give us our first close inspection of Mercury's environs.
In Gustave Holst's orchestral suite "The Planets," Mercury is frenetic, youthful and fleet-footed, aptly titled "The Winged Messenger." In the image above, fair Mercury is portrayed by model and artist Aron-Ra, with background images from NASA and APOD. |
